Photo Lessons by QiProjects

I started teaching Color, B&W and Digital Photography about 6 years ago at Teaneck Community Education Center, Teaneck NJ.

At first we had three programs. The first two, Color and B&W where intended to discuss photography as an art form. The courses tended toward how to get the best photos in terms of lighting, technique and in the case of B&W various ways of acquiring the image from “real” B&W film to B&W using color C41 process to digital B&W with inkjet printing.

Now the only courses offered are: Digital Photography and Digital Image Management. The first, Digital Photography, is designed to cover the basic use of a digital camera. Many of the attendees are just getting started, therefore much of the discussion is about “how the camera works” to understanding the terms and features such as resolution, image size how to use the setup menus etc.

In addition, we spend a lot of time with “hands on” going thru setup including batteries and memory card to taking the picture and playing back on the LCD or TV.

The second course currently being offered is: Image Management. This was added a few years ago to address the need of people who asked “once I take all these pictures…what do we do with them?” The course discusses transferring the images from the camera to computer in an organized way, how to resize for e-mail, printing or posting on the internet at sites like shutterfly.com the only software discussed is ACDSee.com which is a low cost program to batch process images as well as provide single image editing.

As the instructor, I probably have learned more than any student in the program. I recall getting ready to do the first sessions I spent a lot of time making sure I knew how the digital camera works and realized that I had no idea how color is generated from a B&W CCD chip that is used in all cameras.

I learned that there are red, green and blue (RGB) filters over the 4 or 6 or 10 million pixels (in the space of a postage stamp). The onboard computer must then analyze the data from each pixel and reassign a color value of some combination of R, G and B to end up in each pixel having a specific color value of one of over 16 million shades! All this usually happens in a second or two!

My problem as an instructor is that I feel I want to fully explain how everything works thinking that if the student knows how it works then it should be simple to understand all of the details that come up with the camera, computers, printers etc. I tend to underestimate the advantage I have as an Electrical Engineer with 25+ years in digital imaging processing and medical imaging electronics such as CT, MRI and Ultrasound.

But, all in all, I always get rave reviews from the students even though I am sure I have overwhelmed them with “too much Information”. But I would like to think everyone leaves feeling more in control of their camera and more willing to try new things?

I have always offered to meet with any person at their home or coffee shop and spend as much time as they need (at no charge) to go over their specific questions. To date four persons have taken me up on the offer and in each case I thought they were the most rewarding experiences in sharing my knowledge with someone.

Text Paul Merino
Photos Nestor Cristancho

Classes Available:
1) technical aspects (aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, iso, flash... all those settings explained to help you with great pictures)
2) framing and composition (move from snapshots to pictures that tell the story - this is the most important part of photography)
3) photoshop corrections (adjust pictures in the computer, play with colors, exposure, contrast, retouch pictures... make pictures more vivid and alive or convert them to B&W)
4) Digital Photography and Digital Image Management
Formal Classes $20 per hour, Group Discounts
Next Free Classes at Teaneck: Autumn 2007

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